The Illearth War

convulsion. Gasping, he sprang up and stood shuddering on the rocky streambed. The water and the breeze sent a ravenous ache through his bones, as if cold consumed their marrow. He left the stream.

The next instant, he saw Elena's gaze again, felt it sear his memory. He halted. A sudden idea threw back the chill. It sprang practically full-grown into view as if it had been maturing for days in the darkness of his mind, waiting until he was ready.

He realized that he had access to a new kind of bargain-an arrangement or compromise distantly similar, but far superior, to the one which he had formed with the Ranyhyn. They were too limited; they could not meet his terms, fulfil the contract he had made for his survival. But the person with whom he could now bargain was almost ideally suited to help him.

It was just possible that he could buy his salvation from the High Lord.

He saw the difficulties at once. He did not know what the Seventh Ward contained. He would have to steer Elena's apocalyptic impulse through an unpredictable future toward an uncertain goal. But that impulse was something he could use. It made her personally powerful-powerful and vulnerable, blinded by obsession-and she held the Staff of Law. He might be able to induce her to take his place, assume his position at the onus of Lord Foul's machinations. He might be able to lead her extravagant passion to replace his white gold at the crux of the Land's doom. If he could get her to undertake the bitter responsibility which had been so ineluctably aimed at him, he would be free. That would remove his head from the chopping block of this delusion. And all he had to do in return was to place himself at Elena's service in any way which would focus rather than dissipate her inner drives keep her under control until the proper moment.

It was a more expensive bargain than the one he had made with the Ranyhyn. It did not allow him to remain passive; it required him to help her, manipulate her. But it was justified. During the Quest for the Staff of Law, he had been fighting merely to survive an impossibly compelling dream. Now he understood his true peril more clearly.

So much time had passed since he had thought freedom possible that his heart almost stopped at the thrill of the conception. But after its first excitement, he found that he was shivering violently. His clothes were completely soaked.

Aching with every move, he started back toward the gully and the High Lord.

He found her sitting despondent and thoughtful beside a bright campfire. She wore one blanket over her robe; the others were spread out by the blaze for warmth. When he entered the gully, she looked up eagerly. He could not meet her eyes. But she did not appear to notice the chagrin behind his blue lips and taut forehead. Snatching up a warm blanket for him, she drew him close to the fire. Her few low comments were full of concern, but she asked him nothing until the games had beaten back his worst shivers. Then, shyly, as if she were inquiring where she stood in relation to him, she reached up and kissed him.

He returned the caress of her lips, and the movement seemed to carry him over an inner hurdle. He found that he could look at her now. She smiled softly; the voracious power of her gaze was lost again in its elsewhere otherness. She appeared to accept his kiss at its surface valuation. She hugged him, then seated herself beside him. After a moment, she asked, “Did it surprise you to learn that I am so vehement?”

He tried to excuse himself. “I'm not used to such things. You didn't give me fair warning.”

“Pardon me, beloved,” she said contritely. Then she went on. “Were you very dismayed-by what you have beheld in me?”

He thought for a while before he said, “I think if you ever looked at me that way I would be as good as dead.”

“You are safe,” she assured him warmly.

“What if you change your mind?”

“Your doubt chastises me. Beloved, you are part of my life and breath. Do you believe that I could set you aside?”

“I don't know what to believe.” Ids tone expressed vexation, but he hugged her again to counteract it. “Dreaming is like-it's like being a slave. Your dreams come out of all the parts of you that you don't have any control over. That's why-that's why madness is the only danger.”

He was grateful that she did not attempt to argue with him. When the shivering was driven from his bones, he became incontestably drowsy. As she put him to bed, wrapped him snugly in his blankets by the campfire, the only thing which kept him from trusting her completely was the conviction that his bargain contained something dishonest.

For the most part, he forgot that conviction during the next three days. His attention was clouded by a low fever which he seemed to have caught from his plunge in the stream. Febrile patches appeared on his obdurately pale cheeks; his forehead felt clammy with sweat and cold; and his eyes glittered as if he were in the grip of a secret excitement. From time to time, he dozed on the back of his battered mount, and awoke to find himself babbling deliriously. He could not always remember what he had said, but at least once he had insisted maniacally that the only way to stay well was to be perpetually awake. No antiseptic could cleanse the wounds inflicted in dreams. The innocent did not dream.

When he was not mumbling in half-sleep, he was occupied with the trek itself.

The High Lord's party was nearing some kind of destination.

The morning after the landslide had dawned into crisp sunshine-a clear vividness like an atonement for the previous day's distress. When Amok had appeared to lead the High Lord onward, Elena had whistled as if she were calling Myrha, and another Ranyhyn had answered the summons. Covenant had watched it gallop up the valley with amazement in his face. The fidelity of the Ranyhyn toward their own choices went beyond all his conceptions of pride or loyalty. The sight had reminded him of his previous bargain-a bargain which both Elena and Rue had said was still kept among the great horses. But then he had struggled up on his mustang, and other matters had intruded on his fever tinged thoughts. He had retained barely enough awareness to place Elena's marrowmeld gift in Bannor's care.

After the riders had followed Amok out of the valley, Covenant caught his first glimpse of Melenkurion Skyweir. Though it was still many leagues almost due southeast of him, the high mountain lifted its twin, icebound peaks above the range's rugged horizon, and its glaciers gleamed blue in the sunlight as if the sky's azure feet were planted there. Elena's guess seemed correct: Amok's ragged, oblique trail tended consistently toward the towering Skyweir. It vanished almost immediately as Amok led the riders into the lee of-another cliff, but it reappeared with increasing frequency as the day passed. By the following noon, it dominated the southeastern horizon.

But at night Covenant did not have the mountains veering around him. He could not see Melenkurion Skyweir. And after the evening meal, his fever abated somewhat. Freed from these demands and drains upon his weakened concentration, he came to some vague terms with his bargain.

It did not need her consent; he knew this, and berated himself for it. Once the thrill of hope had faded into fever and anxiety, he ached to tell her what he had been thinking. And her attentiveness to him made him ache worse. She cooked special healing broths and stews for him; she went out of her way to supply him with aliantha. But his emotions toward her had changed. There was cunning and flattery in his responses to her tenderness. He was afraid of what would happen if he told her his thoughts.

When he lay awake late at night, shivering feverishly, he had a bad taste of rationalization in his mouth. Then it was not embarrassment or trust which kept him from explaining himself. His jaws were locked by his clinging need for survival, his rage against his own death.

Finally, his fever broke. Late in the afternoon of the third day-the twenty-first since the High Lord's party had left Revelwood-a sudden rush of sweat poured over him, and a tight inner cord seemed to snap. He felt himself relaxing at last. That night, he fell asleep while Elena was still discussing the ignorance or failure of comprehension which kept her from learning anything from Amok.

A long, sound sleep restored his sense of health, and the next morning he was able to pay better attention to his situation. Riding at Elena's side, he scrutinized Melenkurion Skyweir. It stood over him like an aegis, shutting out the whole southeastern dawn. With a low surge of apprehension, he judged that the High Lord's party would probably arrive there before this day was done. Carefully, he asked her about the Skyweir.

“I can tell you little,” she replied. 'It is the tallest mountain known to the Land, and its name shares one of the Seven Words. But Kevin's Lore reveals little of it. Perhaps there is other knowledge in the other Wards, but the